Using Prezi is a prime example of making sure things work in all the platforms you intend to use it on, before you use it. I created a Prezi last week and wanted to share it in an environment where I wouldn’t be guaranteed to have wifi access. I could download it to my laptop, but it is a bit on the heavy side for lugging around too much. My iPad does have a Prezi viewer and editor, so I could use that. Or so I presumed.
Actually I couldn’t use it in my iPad as the Prezi has a video with sound, and the Prezi iPad viewer won’t play sound – something to do with flash technology according to some blogs. I did manage to view the Prezi using the Puffin browser – but still no sound.
So I thought I would use my Android Asus Transformer TF 101. It runs on Android 4.0.3 (also known as the Ice Cream Sandwich version) so it shouldn’t have any problems using flash. However, I couldn’t download the Prezi as there is no dedicated Prezi app for Android like iPads have, and the Prezi download from the website is an exe file and these types of files generally only run on Microsoft Windows systems (you can run some in Linux using the WINE software). So I tried to see what it looked like using my default browser, Chrome, in the Asus. I couldn’t even view it as it said my Adobe Flash player was out of date. When I clicked to update link, I was told that Adobe doesn’t provide a flash update for my device. Well, thanks to the Puffin browser it can play on my device, with sound, so it is fully compatible with Andriod 4.0.3 using wifi.
The result of all this is that I shortened the Prezi by eliminating the sound slides and used my iPad to show the Prezi offline.
There are lots of requests on the web for a dedicated Prezi app for Android – this is another one :). Updating the iPad Prezi app to using sound is another request I would like to add.
